Rising to Life
Jesus was killed on a cross. Judas, on the other
hand, consumed with guilt, hanged himself from a tree. For a moment, juxtapose
the twin images of Jesus and Judas hanging on trees, one pinned to it with
nails, the other dangling on a belt: so similar in appearance and yet so very
different in meaning.
What makes for that difference in meaning?
Obviously, the life that went before, and the spirit in which they each faced
death. One took his own life; the other had his life taken from him. Judas was
defeated by death. Death was defeated by Jesus. How can this possibly be?
Because, when Judas died all that he represented died with him. When Jesus died
all that he stood for survived and was even enhanced and given greater meaning
by his death.
We can assert, with varying degrees of conviction,
that death is not the end, but with absolute certainty only that we all will
die. What we can learn from Jesus’ death is that we do not have to be afraid of
it. Fear of death takes the sap out of life. If we do not fear death then death
is defeated. The recent example of Keith Walker is an excellent one to
illustrate my point.
Six weeks ago Keith and Lianne came to see me about
wedding arrangements - and funeral arrangements. For Keith had cancer of the
kidney and the prognosis was poor. The wedding took place at the beginning of
February and the funeral four weeks later. Now the spirit of many people would
be subdued by the certainty of imminent death. But not Keith’s. He visited
friends, wrote them letters of appreciation, went on excursions, played his
guitar and lived life to the full. He was one of the few people I know who tried
to live the life of the Sermon on the Mount. He was a man of faith, and death
held no fear.
If Crucifixion reveals the meaning of Jesus’ life,
then Resurrection reveals the meaning of his death. At Easter we celebrate the
fact that all that Jesus stood for lived on. The symbol for this is his
resurrected body. We don’t know what kind of body the resurrection body is, but
it is not like the body we have now. That is why, in the stories of those who
meet Jesus after his death, they never recognize him from his physical
appearance. In a certain sense, in so far as those who follow him live out his
teaching, they - we - are his resurrected body.
I suggest that the
overriding myth of the New Testament is ‘Resurrection’. Schweitzer held that for
the early church the ‘Kingdom of Heaven’ was the dominant myth, which they
expected Christ would soon return to inaugurate. When this did not come about,
they then focused on the Resurrection as a way of making sense of their
experiences. I want to say two things about this. Firstly, these do not have to
be either/ors,
either the
Resurrection
or the Kingdom. Secondly, these are not
future states but present experiences.
Let us now consider a crisis point in the lives of the
disciples Judas and Peter. There is a moment, perhaps the briefest of seconds,
when Judas is hit by the realisation that it is all going pear-shaped. Matthew
says he is filled with remorse. He has made a big mistake. His stomach is
turning somersaults. He becomes flushed. ‘My God, what have I done?’ he cries.
In that split second his whole future is decided. Overwhelmed by guilt, he
returns to the priests and asks them to take back the money, to halt the
proceedings which are by now well under way. “I was wrong - I have betrayed an
innocent man to death.” (Mt.27.3-4)
At his last meeting with the priests they were friendly
and grateful. Now they do not want to know. As far as they are concerned, his
guilt is his problem. He flings down the thirty pieces of silver. Cold-bloodedly
the priests discuss how it should be spent; it cannot go back into the Temple
coffers because it is blood-money. Judas, desperate and driven by guilt,
underwritten, perhaps, by the attitude of those to whom he had sold Jesus, kills
himself. Such is the destructive, the fiercely corrosive, power of guilt.
Let us now put the spotlight on Peter. He also watches
the trials and sees the inevitability of death for Jesus. The situation could
mean death for him, too, but he cannot accept that and from cowardice denies
that he is a follower of the prisoner.
But he also sees the spirit in which Jesus faces this
terrible outcome. As, from a distance, he watches Jesus on the cross it dawns on
him how deeply Jesus has drunk from a cup which he himself has hardly sipped. At
this point, with a catalogue of failures behind him, he might have given in to
utter despair about himself. Not Peter. Jesus has shown him the heights to which
the human spirit may rise and Peter, who has fallen short so many times before,
accepts the challenge: his life is transformed.
Now the suicide of Judas
is, as it were, contained in the point of change. When the lightning hits, the
house is not immediately destroyed by that enormous charge of electricity. But
the fire which engulfs the house is contained within the charge. So, with Peter
and Judas, we need to recognize that all else follows from the point of
decision, the point at which all internal energies, positive and negative, come
to a peak. We all experience these crisis points but we do not always realise
how much may follow from one decision. This is true, whichever direction we are
going in. ‘The longest journey begins with
the first step’: within that step the whole
journey is contained. Without it there can be no journey. ‘Resist
the beginnings’: it is also true that the
first small compromise with ourselves leads on to other and greater compromises.
We have to choose when we have only the haziest notion of the consequences of
our action. And we have to choose bravely, in the understanding that all things
are possible.
Imagine two teenage guitarists listening to Jimmy
Hendrix. One says, ‘I could never play like that’, and signs up for a course in
accountancy. The other is excited by the possibilities that are revealed and is
challenged to go off and practice so as to become as good a guitarist. Both are
brought to a point of decision by the experience of listening to Hendrix. The
one who responds positively does not know whether or not he will become as good
a performer as Hendrix. He puts in the practice with no promise of success. He
travels in faith. There is, also, of course the third youngster whom I forgot to
mention. He sits in his bedroom, plays his guitar like an accountant and
imagines he sounds like Hendrix!
What Jesus on the cross shows Peter, as Hendrix showed
the second guitarist, is his potential. Realising his potential he repents his
own shortcomings and his life changes. That is what true repentance means. It
does not mean writhing, guilt-ridden, in the dirt. It means seeing greater
possibilities for oneself and wanting them with all one’s being.
Both Peter and Judas are free to respond positively or
negatively to the events that confront them.
They both responded positively at another crisis point in
their lives, when Jesus called them to follow him. But now, at this new
crossroads, Judas takes a dark, descending path and Peter an open, but uphill,
highway. The one we may call a pessimist, the other an optimist. But are these
words ‘pessimist’ and ‘optimist’ descriptions of their respective natures? Might
it not have been possible for Judas to accept that he had betrayed Jesus and vow
to make up for it somehow? The answer, of course, is Yes and No.
Judas must have had a positive side to him, otherwise he
would not have accepted Jesus’ invitation to follow him, and Jesus, we can be
fairly sure, would not have taken him on had he had no potential other than that
of being a skeleton at the feast. Perhaps Judas was careful, which is why he was
put in charge of the purse, and had a smiggott of puritanism, as we discover in
the reprimand he gave to Mary for wasting her precious perfume on Jesus when it
could have been sold and the money given to the poor. Perhaps he was lacking in
imagination; perhaps he was no risk taker. Whatever it was, he either did not
understand, or did not accept, Jesus’ teaching about forgiveness.
When we look at other people’s lives we can usually see
an inevitability about them. We can also see, with a minority, a point at which
an unpredictable change has taken place. And, of course, Jesus’ preaching is
rooted in that possibility. We can all change. Paul, the persecutor of
Christians, became their champion; Francis kissed the leper and and it set him
free; Schweitzer, inspired by the statue of a Negro, abandoned an academic
career for the jungle; Van Gogh gave up preaching for painting… These were not
career moves but total reorientations.
Because we all have the
capacity for change it is impossible to say who we really are. The subject of
Tolstoy’s story
The Death of Ivan Ilyitch
changes on his death bed. Had he been struck down by lightning a year before, a
different man would have died. If Peter hadn’t been prepared to bet on Jesus he,
too, might have ended up swinging from a tree.
Judas’ fault was not that he sold his master but that he
did not accept the possibility of change. He denied the life, the creativity,
the potential within himself. He saw death as final, as extinction, and he need
not have done. Like the rich young man told to sell his goods and give to the
poor, he had a choice. But he could not see beyond himself, he did not
understand that there is nothing that cannot be forgiven except sin against the
spirit. In his inability to accept that the spirit could work in him he did
indeed sin against it.
As he contemplates the cross is not Peter at a
point in his life similar to that of the Prodigal Son as he contemplates the pig
swill? Neither repents because someone comes along and tells them how awful they
are. They know how awful they are but they are driven, not by guilt, but by
hope. It is not when we are riding high that we need, and are shown, the light
but when we are in the pits. What good, after all, is a candle to someone flying
near the sun? It is the person who is in darkness who prays for light. It is
when we are in the depths that we discover in ourselves either hope or despair.
The difference between Peter and Judas is that, even in his darkest moments,
Peter sees a ray of light; Judas sees nothing but darkness.
When we give up on the belief that all things are
possible; when we forget that our failures can teach us more than our successes;
then we give up on life. Then we follow the Judas path and not the Peter path.
George Fox, the founder of the Society of Friends, known as Quakers, describes
his own experience.
When I myself was in the deep, shut up under all, I could
not believe that I should ever overcome; my troubles, my sorrows and my
temptations were so great that I thought many times I should have despaired, I
was so tempted. But when Christ opened to me how He was tempted by the same
devil, and overcame him and bruised his head, and that through Him and His
power, light, grace, and Spirit, I should overcome also, I had confidence in
Him; so He it was that opened to me when I was shut up and had no hope nor
faith. Christ, who had enlightened me, gave me His light to believe in; He gave
me hope, which He Himself revealed in me, and He gave me His spirit and grace,
which I found sufficient in the deeps and in weakness.
(George
Fox, An Autobiography, p. 83.)
Rembrandt 'Three Crosses'